94 



AFFINITIES OF BRYOPSIS. 



easily grown in bottles of sea-water. Whilst it continues 

 to vegetate, it will keep the water sweet and pure, and 

 no care is needed except to close the mouth of the bottle, 

 so as to prevent evaporation. The Bryopsis, in all its 

 characters, has the structure of a vegetable ; nor does 

 it much resemble the Zoophytes in aspect. And yet it 

 is one of those plants which closely link the lower mem- 

 bers of the vegetable kingdom with those of the ani- 

 mal. Through Bryopsis, the passage is very clear into 

 Acetabularia, an elegant Mediterranean plant, which 

 closely resembles a Zoophyte, and which was, indeed, till 

 lately, classed in that division of animals. Instances of 

 this kind of seeming con- 

 nection between the two great 

 kingdoms of the organized 

 world, meet us frequently 

 among the lower groups of 

 either, and often, as in this 

 case, where connection is 

 least looked for. The genus 

 Cladophora, to which I have 

 already alluded, consists of 

 the branching species of the 

 green division of the old ge- 



CLADOPHORA HUTCHINSI.fi. *^ 



nus Conferva. These plants 



are formed of strings of cells, one cell growing from the 

 apex of another, so as to form a jointed thread. The spe- 

 cies are distinguished by differences in the branching, in 

 the proportionate length of the cells, and in their diame- 

 ter; and nearly all of them are beautiful objects. They 

 mostly form scattered tufts, in rock-pools, but some 



